But if you leave South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, and head west into Wyoming, you pass through the Black Hills, which is some very nice country, and you’ll have Devil's Tower for an exclamation point that you won't soon forget.
Wander down from Montana, the Little Bighorn Battleground and Custer's error in judgment, past the quiet, comfortable town of Dayton, with high plains on your left and the Bighorn Mountains on the right, and you can take any turn and the beauty is everywhere you go.
Gardiner, Montana is the northern gateway into Yellowstone, and I need say nothing more. If you cannot find beauty in that park, we have nothing to talk about. The town of West Yellowstone points you into the west side of the park, and that's even better. Meander alongside the rapids on the Madison River, past the young forests that are healing the scars left by the fires, and watch for moose in the shallows and eagles in the trees. If you only spot the herds of elk and a few bison on the road, don't feel as if you missed too much.
From Idaho you can hop over Teton Pass or meander through Swan Valley along the Snake River. The Teton Range is just around the corner, and you could spend the rest of your life trying to find finer scenery, and you will fail.
The first time you see these places, you will promise yourself that you will win the lottery, or scheme some way to live there somehow, and so passing through any of these entrances will always feel like coming home. You want to see them in the spring, summer, autumn, and winter, for each season brings new beauty to your senses, and you will anticipate the next trip every single day until you can do it again.
That still leaves I-80 entering the state from the west, and you don’t want to miss this either. Just as you leave Utah, you climb into a pleasant canyon, with lush forest and inviting meadows on one side and a garish display of red sandstone cliffs on the other, with the trucks lugging up the hill in the right lane, and the trains chugging up their tracks alongside on the left, and you smile knowing you aren't in Kansas anymore, or California for that matter. The first time we came in this way was about five years ago, after using all those other entrances for over 40 years. Now we look forward to this one, too.
Eventually the canyon ends and you emerge onto sage covered plain. The horizon is suddenly a long way off, and the first pronghorns appear way out there on the right. In case you cannot tell, the wind reminds you....you are in Wyoming.
We entered the state this way a few weeks ago. Autumn color highlighted the canyon this time. I wanted to explore each and every side canyon, but we had many miles to go and that diversion would have to wait for another time.
A brisk wind pushed us across the high plain as storm clouds scudded across the horizon ahead. Small groups of pronghorns dotted the sage covered ground. We even saw a lone moose out for an afternoon stroll just east of Evanston. We didn’t stop until Rawlins, where pronghorns grazed on lawns and in vacant lots at the edge of town. Collapsing there for the night, we anticipated the morning drive, for it promised even better.
Sunday morning found us groggily sucking down coffee in a friendly local restaurant, where I indulged myself in one of those skillet breakfasts that I would regret later when reacquainting with the scale upon returning to work. Back in the pickup, I found NPR on the satellite radio, and the chatter of the Car Guys entertained us while motoring north. We crossed the Continental Divide twice, dropping into and the climbing out of the Divide Basin. Pastures on both side of the road supported herds of Hereford cattle, and just about every time we turned our gaze left or right, we spotted more groups of pronghorns.
The occasional mountain loomed in the distance, and then numerous rock escarpments took over the scenery. Soon we were in one of those many gorgeous settings that Wyoming offers, with the Pathfinder Reservoir tucked into the valley to our right, with vertical rock walls rising above, and then the North Platte River dipped under our highway, lined by cottonwoods busily changing into their autumn wardrobes, and dotted by those perennial optimists and their flicking fly rods.
North of Casper we entered a vast grassland, preserved now under the name of Thunder Basin. Looking across this plain, I wondered about those many settlers who walked alongside Conestoga wagons through this eternity 150 years ago, putting in ten miles or so every day for months to get this far away from the East. And here we were knocking off 1300 miles in a weekend.
I’ve often referred to Wyoming as a time warp, a place where we can return to an America of thirty years ago, a time I can understand far better than the contradiction we must now endure. The radio talked of some politician’s scheme to raise money for the state by charging the tourists a toll to drive the state’s roads. Said money would be directed to road maintenance, a plot that almost makes sense, even to a passionate tax hater like me. I like Wyoming so much, I’d probably pay it. Wyoming voted it down.
In California, as Herb Cane often observed, we are charged admission to get into San Francisco by the tollbooths on all those bridges leading there. Here we pay road taxes that never go to maintain the roads, but instead disappear into the morass of entitlements and government waste and corruption. We have the worst roads in the nation, and no one even questions this, as this confused state staggers into an uncertain future.
And I sit here thinking about Wyoming every single day, and it is worse now, because in a week we will go there again. I’m having trouble staying patient.
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